Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Homicides continue to drop in Chicago, to the lowest levels since the 1960s, but shootings remain stubbornly higher, with the numbers of incidents and victims both on the rise at the nine-month mark of 2014, according to statistics released Wednesday by Chicago police. For the first nine months, 1,927 people were shot, a 6 percent increase that translates into 114 more victims than the year-earlier period, the statistics show. But homicides fell 7 percent to 298, 22 fewer killings than a year earlier and the lowest numbers since 1965, according to the department. It also marks the eighth consecutive quarter in which homicides have dropped. Despite the drop in homicides, though, Chicago...

HAMPTON — It's still an open question what will become of the nine vehicles purchased using nearly $400,000 from Hampton's Blue Water Tobacco cigarette sting.
But the mystery surrounding their location is no more: The unmarked vehicles — six SUVs, a van,...

HAMPTON — Hampton's city manager on Thursday ordered that the Police Division no longer raise and spend money in an undercover investigation — as it did in a recent black-market cigarette sting — unless the operation is specifically authorized by her...

HAMPTON — Police Chief Charles R. Jordan Jr. resigned Tuesday after eight years at the department's helm, asserting that some in Hampton's leadership are not adequately backing his department.
In recent years, Jordan said, he's experienced a declining...

HAMPTON — They are among the most significant and vexing questions pertaining to the Hampton Police Division's cigarette trafficking sting:
Who authorized the Hampton Police Division — and the federal agency it once partnered with — to run a multimillion...

HAMPTON — An undercover cigarette-tax sting operation once known only to a small group of Hampton police officers and federal agents will be reviewed by an independent accounting firm and a former Richmond city attorney, in addition to the continuing...

HAMPTON — Two City Council members say Hampton's city manager has backed off her prior assertion that a "gift" from a private entity provided funding for an undercover police company created to go after cigarette bootleggers.
In a Sept. 27...

HAMPTON — The City of Hampton has backed off its prior assertion that an outside accounting firm audited the Hampton Police Division's undercover company that took in millions of dollars in a cigarette sting operation. On Sept. 13, responding to...

HAMPTON — One day in the spring of 2010, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) approached the Hampton Police Division about working with him on undercover cigarette stings.
That agent, Clifford D. Posey, had...

HAMPTON — For more than a year and a half, Hampton police officers ran an undercover cigarette business.Tens of thousands of dollars at a time would change hands inside a nondescript industrial warehouse off Aberdeen Road, as the department's "Blue...

The mother of a felon whose "handsome" booking photo went viral after it was posted on the Stockton Police Department's Facebook account is hoping to show a softer side of her son as she tries to raise funds for his legal defense.
Katherine...

If being booked on suspicion of felony weapons charges wasn’t enough to keep thousands of admirers from fawning over a convicted felon’s mug shot in Stockton, maybe this will – he’s married.
“I just visited my wife and she said I like, blew up all over...

It was a bloody confrontation more than three years ago in the desert brush of Arizona about 11 miles from the border with Mexico. When it was over, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry was dead and two weapons found at the scene would shine a light on...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has turned down a pair of 2nd Amendment appeals lodged by the National Rifle Assn., keeping in place laws that restrict those under 21 years old from buying or carrying a handgun.
Without comment, the justices dismissed...

Dan Millen remembers Darion Marcus Aguilar walking into his Rockville gun shop with an air of confidence and a wad of cash. Aguilar wanted a shotgun, which he said he planned to keep in his home for protection.
Aguilar's dress was nondescript, Millen...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration announced Thursday that it would close loopholes in the rules on acquiring machine guns and other dangerous weapons and ban U.S. military-style firearms sent overseas from returning to this country.
The...